Last month, SurveyMonkey launched their iOS mobile app, backed by Google Capital. CEO Dave Goldberg promises a “smarter, agile, and ultimately more productive workforce.” This app strengthens customer feedback programs by allowing faster responses to customer situations. However, it reinforces the idea that customer feedback is just about watching the numbers.

Certainly, numbers are important, but a good survey also captures detailed customer comments. To be truly smart, you simply can’t ignore customers’ comments—even if they’re too long to read on your iPhone!

At Interaction Metrics (in part through our Narrative Analysis) we’ve discovered that customer comments are invaluable because they answer questions like these:

1. How much of the customer experience is captured by the numbers?

We’ve found that up to half of the things customers comment about are not covered by a survey’s multiple-choice questions.

2. Is customer vocabulary different from yours?

Companies often use internal language when surveying their customers. For instance, hotel guests think about clean towels and soft sheets, not the “housekeeping department,” and B2B customers might think they’re on the phone with “customer service” not “inside sales.”

3. What are the root causes driving customers’ perceptions?

We often hear companies say they know their score but they don’t know why. For example, in one of our client surveys, “Sales” got a low score, even though customers also said the sales reps were amazing. From dissecting the comments, we learned that the main reason for the low score was that customers didn’t know how to reach their rep.